The columnists are not the competition

For a long time, being read in Cairo took a printing press. A column needed a newspaper behind it, and a newspaper needed presses, paper, trucks and kiosks at every corner. Very few people had that, so very few people were read.

The columnist's rivals were easy to name. The other columnists, on the other pages, in the other papers. Everyone knew who they were, and everyone measured themselves against them.

Then the press stopped costing anything. A student in Shubra can now write eight hundred words on her phone at midnight and have them in front of more people by morning than a page in a paper used to reach.

The first reaction of anyone who remembers the old cost is relief. Look how easy it is now. Look what we no longer have to pay for.

The second reaction should be alarm, and it usually arrives late. If the cost no longer keeps anyone out, then everyone is in. The student, the retired teacher, the man with strong opinions about traffic, the girl who reviews every street food cart in her district. All of them are writing, every day, for the same tired eyes.

Yet a good many professionals still behave as if the old wall were standing. They study each other's work, envy each other's bylines, and treat the noise from outside as something beneath them, rather than the thing they are now up against.

The press used to be what was scarce. Now it is the reader's next five minutes, and those are going to whoever earns them.